I must be missing the point here, because this feels like bad advice. Calls like `panic` and `expect` and `assert` are there to uphold invariants, i.e. to deal with things that should never happen unless there is a logic error that invalidates the assumptions you hold about your program. It means "if you got here, I (the programmer) probably fucked up badly".

If an operation is fallible, it should return an error type and make it the job of the caller to deal with that. Silently returning default seems like a disaster waiting to happen, ala On Error Resume Next (which indeed was a disaster to deal with).

Now if this panic handler, instead of silently continuing in release mode, invoked some sort of "save your work and restart" handler such that the user doesn't lose anything and the program would restart in a known-good state, that seems like it would be a sensible way of doing things.